The bare bones of prepping for an international career

I’ve had several requests lately for career advice and assistance. That makes me think it’s a good time to repeat some basic points. Here are Alanna’s essential five things to have any hope of getting a job in international development:

1. Get an office job while you’re still in school. As I’ve written, most development work is office work. You need to prove you can handle an office every day. Really, the only way to do that is to have an office job. Do it in the summers if you can’t hack it while in school. Office work is not the most profitable way to spend your time, but it will be worth it later.

2. Study something useful at university. For example, technical subjects like nursing and IT are useful. Epidemiology is useful. A master’s degree is more useful than an undergrad degree.

3. Learn to write. I don’t mean you need to be a novelist, but with practice everybody can write a clear, useful report at decent speed. Have writing samples to prove you can do it.

4. Study a second language. You don’t have to get all that good at it, but making the effort demonstrates you are willing to commit yourself to international and intercultural work. If you are already bilingual, you don’t have to learn a third language. People will assume you are good at intercultural navigation.

5. I think this is the hardest one: Have a goal for what you want to do, that’s specific but not too specific. “I am interested in food security and emergency relief” has a good level of specificity. “I want to work for UNDP” is too specific. “I am interested in women’s empowerment, reproductive health, and community development” is too vague. There is kind of an art to this; basically you want to give people a sense of who you are and what you want. Too broad and they don’t have any sense of you. To narrow and you’ve ruled out too many jobs. If you’re having trouble with this, it’s a good thing to talk over with a mentor. (Yes, if you don’t have a mentor, I will help. Within reason.)

This is great, there is just one thing I would add: Volunteer
If you volunteer with an organization that interests you while still in school you get to know how things work a little bit and you get to know people there. Doing an internship also helps. I’m just finishing a post grad program in International Project management that requires us to do an internship in order to graduate. Many of the grads that have come in to speak to the class have said that their first job came as a result of the internship (with the same organization).

I have been feeling recently that I am starting on global health too early — as in, I wish I had developed a career and gained some experience & expertise first . But this article makes me feel like I am starting too late, since I have left the land of opportunity that is college.

I must be doing something wrong, because my internships have led only to more internships, and my office jobs to more office jobs. When I was a field intern in Bosnia, I thought I had my foot in the door, but it turns out that was a aberration. Almost two years later, it’s nearly forgotten, has become a footnote in my employment history, almost like it never happened at all. I’m repeatedly told that I belong in administration, at a desk, in a head office, not in the field. Occasionally, I’ll be offered an internship here in the US, always unpaid, by someone who acts like that’s a generous offer–despite the fact that I’m too old and experienced for that, and it’s insulting at the point.

You mention this was targeted at college students and recent grads– one question we consistently get at Working World from students and young professionals is: how necessary is a Master’s degree in a career in international affairs? From your perspective, what is the value of a Master’s degree in a career in international development? And if it is indeed necessary, at what point do you suggest pursuing a higher degree? Right after college, or do you need a few years of experience to make the degree more worthwhile?

I’s say that if you can get a field-based job, somehow, the Master’s degree is less important. You can stay in overseas postings building local knowledge and getting your jobs on the basis of experience and being known for competence. However, if you can’t get that first field job (and many people can’t; it’s luck no everyone has) then you need a Master’s degree for just about any job past program assistant. I have even worked at places where even the program assistants had Master’s degrees.

It’s amazing how many students would give their right leg for an overseas volunteer experience doing work in HIV/AIDS / microcredit / insert issue, but show limited interest in doing the same kind of work locally. When I finished my undergrad in Vancouver, Canada, some of my classmates wanting to work in international development went overseas to complete their Masters at schools like LSE or LSHTM. I chose to build up experience in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, a place with one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the Western Hemisphere. A year later I had a solid experience and an inexpensive Business Diploma from a local college that no one outside of Canada had heard of. That combination proved much more valuable than a Masters, helped me secure a great interantional internship through CIDA, and my lack of a Masters hasn’t been an issue since.

1) Don’t underestimate the importance of a Masters degree. Everyone has them these days. When nine applicants have an MA, the tenth without it needs to be all the more impressive in order to compete. Perhaps especially when the nine are competent locals, and the tenth is a hopeful expat.

2) Don’t underestimate the importance time in the field, even as an intern or volunteer. Two reasons: 1) besides the right degree, time in the field is the basic “stuff” of credibility in this industry; 2) The field is where many of the field-based jobs are negotiated and settled. NGOs have incentive to hire field position from inside the country where the position is, rather than recruit and relocate someone from another country.

[…] who I think are very insightful and posts that I think are actually quite good (for example, here and here). But what I find interesting are some of the comments, or other posts in other blogs by […]

I think one of the problems lies in the availability of international job websites. I’m a Dutch student, and having a hard time finding an international job via the web. I wish there were more websites that’d actually FOCUS on a particular branch overseas. The bigger ones like http://www.monster.com or even smaller ones like http://www.searchjobsabroad.com/International-jobs.html are too much created for a wide audience.
I know a decent preparation is one of the most important parts (or maybe actually the most important one), but the online job websites could definitely use some improvement.

[…] to a 9-5 office job where the dress code is “business casual.” But as Alanna once wrote, “Most development work is office work”, and in another post, “we can go days without seeing anyone who is helped by our work.” She […]

Big Fat Important Disclaimer

NOTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF USAID OR THE US GOVERNMENT. Everything written here is purely my personal opinion. The contents of this blog are the responsibility of me, Alanna Shaikh, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of USAID or the U.S. Government.

Disclaimer

Everything written here is purely my personal opinion. The contents of this blog are the responsibility of me, Alanna Shaikh, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of USAID or the U.S. Government.